Fact
Thrillist became a $500M company starting as a men's-clothing newsletter
Advising on how to start a newsletter, Sam notes that while fun consumer newsletters can work, B2B makes money faster. His proof point: Thrillist is a $500M company that began as newsletters for things like men's clothing.
“That I know of, no, but Thrillist is a $500 million company and they started out as like newsletters for like men's clothing. So you definitely can do some of these fun stuff, but if you wanna make more money and make it faster, do B2B.”
Steal thisStart a newsletter in a professional/B2B niche, and go very narrow, if you want to monetize faster.
Story
Daily Candy, Thrillist, Groupon: billion-dollar companies that started as email lists
Sam relaunched The Hustle as an all-email business in 2016 after studying Groupon, Daily Candy, and Thrillist. The insight: build a huge email list as a distribution channel, then layer products on top.
“if you study the history of Groupon, of, um, Daily Candy, of Thrillist, people may not even know what the last two are, but anyway, I was like, man, some of these like billion-dollar companies all started with an email list. Like, let's do that. Let's build up this huge email list and then start creating more products and use that as a distribution channel. And I think we could build a billion-dollar company that way.”
Steal thisBuild an email list as your owned distribution channel first, then launch products into it.